07-02-2019, 01:34 PM
i can see that ducks might be the ideal sailboat pet...especially if you had a high likelihood of sinking. They might be able to manage.
Or, say your stuck in the doldrums; run out of food....
crap, i just had a flash back to some old sci-fi flick. Was it Journey to the center of the Earth? With Pat Boone? Not sure.
Anyway, one of the scientists on the expedition had a pet duck he brought along.
There was some ribbing from the others; suggestions about various duck recipes....
It's irksome to have so much irrelevant clutter in the brain; some of it half-baked, like the movie i almost remember that i saw as a kid.
It would be nice if we had an eraser of sorts, for our brains. Delete button.
But i guess we don't.
I wonder if there's an area of the brain where most of the useless clutter resides?
Maybe we could genetically engineer something like Alzheimer's disease, to affect specific areas of memory?
Maybe cause this thread to get back on topic?
Speaking of memory, i saw a netflix documentary a few nights ago. It was about an international memory competition that happens every year.
The contestants compete at events that show-case the prowess of their recall skills.
It's pretty fascinating stuff.
I saw a guy (in the flick) break the record for a single deck of cards.
The event gives each contestant two decks of cards; both shuffled.
The athlete must look through deck one, without changing the order, and memorize the cards.
Then, using the second deck, he/she must reorganize it to match the sequence of the first deck.
(Hopefully, you can picture the process.)
Anyway, the winner does this in 16 seconds. It's an amazing feat. Hard to imagine the human brain has such hidden capacity.
There's another card event in this memory olympics, wherein the contestant has to memorize the order of the cards in as many packs of cards they can, within an allotted time. Iirc, possibly one hour.
The record is around 132 full decks of cards. No errors.
It's pretty freaky shit.
The competition reminded me of a gymnastics meet.
All the memory giants had to compete in a variety of events, to go home with the prize.
This deals out the idiot savants, or people that have an uncanny memory, but only for phone numbers.
(Though, for sure, there could be a 'special Olympics version of this at some time.)
My takeaway from this documentary (which i'm not exactly recommending; you'd have to be fairly nerdish to like it) is this:
The contestants were fairly normal people that had decided to take on the challenge of having the biggest memory biceps in the world.
Analogous to a kid that decides to become a great juggler; body builder; runner...whatever.
It's like that.
And there are techniques they use to acquire these skills. Same like the rest of skills.
I found that part fascinating...the way they turn data into mental images of known objects; numbers become letters; letters become pictures; an emotional aspect was necessary; derived from pre-stored data banks in the brain.
That aspect is rather stunning...that the means to memorizing thousands of decimal of Pi, for instance, involves relating sections of numbers to events and objects in the 'real' world.
This boring documentary that i found fascinating also addresses the current conundrum regarding memory...in that we can now carry it in our pocket.
Why would we bother to remember a mess of phone numbers, for instance?
The doc also mentions the history of some of the techniques involved in developing huge memory muscle...and they go way back. Ancient Greece; further, even.
Scholars and speech givers of olden days had to memorize shit-loads of data, to wax eloquent on their subject; especially Holy scripture stuff.
Also true regarding old cultures that relied on oral history instead of texts.
Strangely, Mongolians are top competitors in the sport...due to their inherent (and inherited?) background in images in the way their letters worked.
Men tend to dominate the sport, which also brings up questions.
However, in the last official competition, a Mongolian woman came in second.
I see i've rambled on a bunch.
What i want to do is bring this back to QM.
And how it can be linked directly to classical physics.
As if the rules for each are actually the same.
stay tuned if you think you're nerd enough.
Or, say your stuck in the doldrums; run out of food....
crap, i just had a flash back to some old sci-fi flick. Was it Journey to the center of the Earth? With Pat Boone? Not sure.
Anyway, one of the scientists on the expedition had a pet duck he brought along.
There was some ribbing from the others; suggestions about various duck recipes....
It's irksome to have so much irrelevant clutter in the brain; some of it half-baked, like the movie i almost remember that i saw as a kid.
It would be nice if we had an eraser of sorts, for our brains. Delete button.
But i guess we don't.
I wonder if there's an area of the brain where most of the useless clutter resides?
Maybe we could genetically engineer something like Alzheimer's disease, to affect specific areas of memory?
Maybe cause this thread to get back on topic?
Speaking of memory, i saw a netflix documentary a few nights ago. It was about an international memory competition that happens every year.
The contestants compete at events that show-case the prowess of their recall skills.
It's pretty fascinating stuff.
I saw a guy (in the flick) break the record for a single deck of cards.
The event gives each contestant two decks of cards; both shuffled.
The athlete must look through deck one, without changing the order, and memorize the cards.
Then, using the second deck, he/she must reorganize it to match the sequence of the first deck.
(Hopefully, you can picture the process.)
Anyway, the winner does this in 16 seconds. It's an amazing feat. Hard to imagine the human brain has such hidden capacity.
There's another card event in this memory olympics, wherein the contestant has to memorize the order of the cards in as many packs of cards they can, within an allotted time. Iirc, possibly one hour.
The record is around 132 full decks of cards. No errors.
It's pretty freaky shit.
The competition reminded me of a gymnastics meet.
All the memory giants had to compete in a variety of events, to go home with the prize.
This deals out the idiot savants, or people that have an uncanny memory, but only for phone numbers.
(Though, for sure, there could be a 'special Olympics version of this at some time.)
My takeaway from this documentary (which i'm not exactly recommending; you'd have to be fairly nerdish to like it) is this:
The contestants were fairly normal people that had decided to take on the challenge of having the biggest memory biceps in the world.
Analogous to a kid that decides to become a great juggler; body builder; runner...whatever.
It's like that.
And there are techniques they use to acquire these skills. Same like the rest of skills.
I found that part fascinating...the way they turn data into mental images of known objects; numbers become letters; letters become pictures; an emotional aspect was necessary; derived from pre-stored data banks in the brain.
That aspect is rather stunning...that the means to memorizing thousands of decimal of Pi, for instance, involves relating sections of numbers to events and objects in the 'real' world.
This boring documentary that i found fascinating also addresses the current conundrum regarding memory...in that we can now carry it in our pocket.
Why would we bother to remember a mess of phone numbers, for instance?
The doc also mentions the history of some of the techniques involved in developing huge memory muscle...and they go way back. Ancient Greece; further, even.
Scholars and speech givers of olden days had to memorize shit-loads of data, to wax eloquent on their subject; especially Holy scripture stuff.
Also true regarding old cultures that relied on oral history instead of texts.
Strangely, Mongolians are top competitors in the sport...due to their inherent (and inherited?) background in images in the way their letters worked.
Men tend to dominate the sport, which also brings up questions.
However, in the last official competition, a Mongolian woman came in second.
I see i've rambled on a bunch.
What i want to do is bring this back to QM.
And how it can be linked directly to classical physics.
As if the rules for each are actually the same.
stay tuned if you think you're nerd enough.